xi, 340 pages : 24 cm

"Drawing on rich archival sources and her own extensive interviews with women physicians, Ellen More shows how the ideal of balance informed and influenced the practice of healing for women doctors in America over the past 150 years. She argues that the history of women practitioners throughout the twentieth century fulfills the expectations constructed within the Victorian culture of professionalism. Restoring the Balance demonstrates that women doctors - collectively and individually - sought to reconcile the interests and culture of women with the claims of disinterestedness, scientific objectivity, and specialization of modern medical professionalism

That goal, More writes, reaffirmed by each generation, lies at the heart of her central question: what does it mean to be a woman physician?"--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-332) and index

Introduction: restoring the balance? -- The professionalism of Sarah Dolley, M.D. -- Gendered practices: late Victorian medicine in the woman's sphere -- Maternalist medicine: women physicians in the Progressive Era -- Redefining the margins: women physicians and American hospitals, 1900-1939 -- Getting organized: the Medical Women's National Association and World War I -- New directions: the eclipse of maternalist medicine -- Resisting the "Feminine Mystique," 1938-1968 -- Medicine and the new women's movement -- Conclusion: reconciling equality an difference

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